Interdisciplinary mathematical methods for societal decision-making and resilience

Abstract

This issue marks the beginning of the eighth year of Environment Systems & Decision's publication. In this issue, we feature research articles at the intersection of society and analytics. Several interdisciplinary articles explore how modeling approaches, leveraging expert and stakeholder inputs, can be used for decision-making and policy development in complex environmental and economic systems. Topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, ecosystem services, water quality, and environmental restoration are discussed in this issue. Rather than make ad hoc decisions, formalized and structured decision-making results in better decisionmaking, especially with respect to complex systems involving people, technology, and the environment. First, Cooke and Golub (2020) described a market-based mechanism to monetize uncertainty reduction. Using models for pricing commodity futures, they found that a reduction in weather-related uncertainty can yield billions of dollars in consumer surplus. Yao et al. (2020) conducted a content analysis on news media and government reports related to environmental policy-making. Their results explored the relationships between public opinion, presidential agendas, and media coverage on environmental policy. Walpole et al. (2020) explored the role of home attachment in the decisionmaking process of whether or not to evacuate during a wildfire. The authors tested the effect of different informational cues on evacuation decisions, finding a complex relationship between attachment, information, and evacuation. McKay